Case Volume/Patient Outcomes

As a group, the hip and knee surgeons at Plaza Medical Center are Fort Worth’s most experienced. Each performs hundreds of joint-replacement and reconstruction procedures annually. Their combined activity makes Plaza Fort Worth’s busiest center for hip and knee surgery.

These facts are important to remember if you’re experiencing persistent pain and loss of mobility involving a hip or knee and want to find out what your options are.

That’s because there is strong evidence linking both patient satisfaction and improved joint replacement success with how often a surgeon performs a hip or knee procedure. The same association exists between positive surgical outcomes and how often a hip or knee procedure is performed at a given hospital.

For example, researchers at Harvard Medical School recently found that patients who had their knees replaced by surgeons in hospitals with higher knee-replacement volumes were much less likely to have a bad outcome. This pattern still held true as much as two years after the surgery. The hip and knee surgeons at Plaza have some of the lowest complication rates in the region.

The Harvard researchers looked at the same question with regard to hip replacements. They found that, among 57,000 patients who underwent total hip replacement at more than 3,000 hospitals across the country, those whose surgeries were performed in low-volume centers and by low-volume surgeons were more likely to experience failure of their hip implant. This was especially true during the first 18 months following surgery.

At Plaza Medical Center, your joint-replacement or reconstruction procedure will be performed by fellowship-trained, board-certified surgeons with extensive experience.